WWSD?, The reality of augmented attributes Options

[Tyro]

This is great. Gonna show that off to my group tomorrow. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I like your SR site. Hope to have one of my own soon.


Not to derail the topic, but why do you say that? Can you recommend any fixes?

I would also like to know.

[Jaid]

I would also like to know.

it's pretty simple. consider that a human today can lift a certain amount. a brief google search gives me 263 kg for the world record for 'clean and jerk' in weight lifting in the highest weight category (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_records_in_Olympic_weightlifting). the clean and jerk is an olympic event where you are essentially lifting a weight over your head (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_and_jerk)

the formula for lifting over your head is 5 kg per point of strength, plus 5 kg per hit on a str + bod test. the highest a human being can get without augmentation is 7 in an attribute, and for the sake of argument, we'll presume the person is allowed and has spent the BP to buy the exceptional attribute twice, giving a str and bod score of 7 (being a little generous, but it won't make a difference). this gives us 35 kg from the strength, and another 70 kg maximum from the test, or 105 kg total. if we wanted to be *really* generous, we could allow the human (lifty mcweightlifter) to invest in the lucky quality, and have an edge of 8. this could result in another 8 hits, or 40 kg. so we're up to 145 kg now. assuming all the dice rolled are hits (though admittedly, we haven't applied the rule of 6 for edge use).

so with a theoretically maxed-out human, we're very far below what the expected results of weight lifting should give. less than half, assuming the human rolls 22 hits on 22 exploding dice, which i think is being very generous. and again, this is the upper extremity of unaugmented human capability; you couldn't make an unaugmented human with those attributes in shadowrun.

so, there you have it. the rules are quite definitely off.

of course, since no gear has any weights listed anyways, this isn't likely to be a huge problem. but when your maxed out augmented troll (str and bod 12 (18) shall we say? assuming the same kind of benefits, plus augmentations, is going to be lifting a maximum of 270 kg without spending edge, and that's assuming we give him 2 exceptional attributes, 2 genetic treatments to increase his maximum strength and bod, and 6 points of str and bod augmentation (strength isn't so hard, but i have no idea where the bod augmentation comes from... perhaps he's also an initiated adept? maybe cyberlimbs?), we have someone who can barely lift more than the world record in weight lifting today. assuming the stars all align and he gets 36 hits on 36 dice... though again, we could throw edge into the mix (for 7 more dice). but really, the fact that you need to get a 9 foot tall, genetically augmented, exceptionally strong, fit, augmented troll before you can even have a small chance (some quick math gives me less than 1% to roll 5+ on all 36 dice) of performing at a similar level to modern humans should tell you that there's something screwy going on with the rules.

[Karoline]

*cough* so what rule do you use then?

The 'lift off the ground' rule of 15kg per str point and then hits seems like it'd get you alot closer. That's 105 just for the 7 str, and then another 75 on average from hits on 7 bod and str, and we're looking at around 200 kilos. Still a bit shy of the world record, but we can assume the world record involved a larger than average number of hits and some burnt edge.

[Ryu]

A human with lifting experience will also have and know a certain weight that is "do-able" for a certain type of lift. The fixed base value should be much higher, the variance via hits lower. It is IMO better to test for the proper application of force (Throwing test, balance test...), and to eyeball the limit based on strength (weight) and body(lift length).

[Whipstitch]

Honestly, the clean and jerk is the sort of thing that makes me wish that there was a catch all athletics skill as opposed to an athletics skill group. It's a rather technical lift that requires knowing how to kick in as many muscle groups as possible and then lining up your body as straight as possible so that once the weight is up top and you've straightened out the worst is over. You're not really going anywhere with 260 kilos over your head, I can tell you that much. Still, I suppose its neither here nor there since you won't here me arguing any time soon that the rules aren't screwed up in this area.

[Jaid]

A human with lifting experience will also have and know a certain weight that is "do-able" for a certain type of lift. The fixed base value should be much higher, the variance via hits lower. It is IMO better to test for the proper application of force (Throwing test, balance test...), and to eyeball the limit based on strength (weight) and body(lift length).

agreed. i doubt you see very many people who can lift 105 kg one attempt as their maximum, followed by 150 kg as their max on their next attempt, only to discover on their third attempt that the max they can lift is 90 kg.

(edit: oh, and as far as "what method did knasser use to determine appropriate weights", i couldn't say for sure but at a guess he used some research to determine a current appropriate value for human maximum, factored in that the street sam was going to be stronger than that, and then factored in that the troll was going to be a whole crudload stronger than that, via the mk I eyeball technique.)

edit 2:

Honestly, the clean and jerk is the sort of thing that makes me wish that there was a catch all athletics skill as opposed to an athletics skill group. It's a rather technical lift that requires knowing how to kick in as many muscle groups as possible and then lining up your body as straight as possible so that once the weight is up top and you've straightened out the worst is over. You're not really going anywhere with 260 kilos over your head, I can tell you that much. Still, I suppose its neither here nor there since you won't here me arguing any time soon that the rules aren't screwed up in this area.

this still wouldn't fix the problem. it would, at best, add about 6-8 dice to the unaugmented human's roll (perhaps a bit more if we allow even more qualities to be chosen beyond our already large positive quality BP spending), which still won't get you anywhere near the appropriate amounts. although i will agree that something similar to the artisan skill would make a lot of sense as a physical skill (ie: this skill represents your ability at one form of physical activity, ranging from team sports to dancing to downhill skiing and beyond)

[jimbo]

Edit: And yes, I'm taking into consideration the diminishing defense pool.

Now, I couldn't help but snicker out loud when the first thought that occurred to me was "Not to mention the diminishing attacker pool."

Troll swings, CRUNCH.
Ganger 1 (Eddie): "Hey Steve...two more like that and we're only going to get a 3 friend bonus in melee!"
Ganger 2 (Steve): "Just pray this is one of the fightsthat goes against the curve in our favor!"

[Karoline]

Now, I couldn't help but snicker out loud when the first thought that occurred to me was "Not to mention the diminishing attacker pool."

Troll swings, CRUNCH.
Ganger 1 (Eddie): "Hey Steve...two more like that and we're only going to get a 3 friend bonus in melee!"
Ganger 2 (Steve): "Just pray this is one of the fightsthat goes against the curve in our favor!"

*snicker* Yeah, made sure that the attackers get their DPs reduced as their numbers dropped. Of course I couldn't really simulate the point at which the gangers go "Oh no, he killed Kenny, run!"

You're dialog really wants me to make a comic in the vein of OOTS or Goblins.

[Tyro]

That was awesome ^_^

I LOL'd

[jimbo]

Just another thing about 4eSR that I like over "the other 4e"...the "monsters" in SR are real and would go "Dang...someone else can storm this Omaha beach...I'm outta here while the getting's good."

[ClemulusRex]

WWSD reminds me of an article that I think was in Dragon magazine maybe some 20 years ago. In it the author took about 5 or 6 different RPGs and tried to figure out how long it would take for two "man on the street" characters without any combat training to beat each other into unconsciousness. The 0-level D&D characters with straight "10"s took maybe 4-5 minutes to brain each other--but that's only because a combat round was an entire minute back in 2nd ed. The Shadowrun characters with "3"s across the board took about the same time as I recall--the difference being that it was 100+ rounds of combat. This would have been SR1 or 2, so with target numbers of 8 on three dice, they just couldn't hit each other...

[Ryu]

agreed. i doubt you see very many people who can lift 105 kg one attempt as their maximum, followed by 150 kg as their max on their next attempt, only to discover on their third attempt that the max they can lift is 90 kg.

I would suggest that base maximum weights are made a function of base attribute values. Normal lifting tasks get a strain DV based on overload that is resisted with a body+strength test. To make the lift itself you´d need to test body+strength vs. the strain DV. (Have to think about Edge effects.)

[knasser]

Sorry for the no-posting: been extremely busy, lately.

The problem with the RAW weight-lifting rules is less the amounts and more the wild swings in results. As far as I can guess, the writer thought that there should be a big game element to weight-lifting and felt compelled to make a maximum lift the result of maximum rolls, to the extent that average rolls gave you far less.

The first thing that I did was shift the bulk of the result into the fixed formula based on Body + Strength, leaving the dice roll component to account for a much lesser proportion of the result. People with a bit of weight-lifting experience have a reasonable idea of how much they can lift - it's not a complete surprise each time. That said, if you start spending Edge, you can bump it higher than you normally could this way, and that's how I want it to be.

The second decision I made was to keep the system based on Body + Strength, rather than just Strength + Strength. It seemed to add a little depth and additional detail to the game that way and it turned Strength into an attribute that wasn't solely about amount of muscle, but about how you use it (because a character with high Body but low Strength probably is pretty large but hasn't really trained their neuro-muscular ability much).

The final formula I used is in my House Rule document here

Anyway, the relevant part was this:

2. Lifting rules are amended as follows:
30kg per point of strength overhead, plus 5kg per successs on Bod+Str
55kg per point of strenght straight lift, plus 10kg per success on Bod+Str

The RAW lifting rules seem to have been designed to represent real world maximums as
the result of very good dice rolls. That is fine except that the system presented causes
drastically reduced lifted weights on typical dice rolls. In real life, the weight you can lift
does not swing by 30-40% from attempt to attempt. The adjustment above preserves the
dice roll element, but shifts most of the result onto a fixed formula to reduce the absurd
variance. It is calculated so that someone with Strength 6, Body 6, would be around the
current world records for weight-lifting.

I'm not entirely happy with it - it was a slightly off-the-cuff fix. But I consider it far superior to the published rules. It's a shame as I don't like to make house rules generally , due to laziness. However, the principle is good. If it needs refinement, I think it's in fine-tuning the exact formula rather than shifting any of the result back on to variable dice results.

Hope this helps. I like the ganger dialogue, btw.

K.

[knasser]

Well, a month later but I suppose I'll revive this thread. Since I'm finally back, I finally got around to writing a little combat simulator, seeing as how I thought the troll would be able to take so many more gangers. The number required was actually much smaller than I thought, but haven't had a chance to go through and make absolutely sure all my stuff is working as it should.

So, ran a hundred thousand trials and came back with an average of the gangers having to be 7.94215 in number before they could take down the troll (unarmed combat), which was actually alot lower than I was expecting. The +4 bonus from friends and melee, and the stacking penalty for multiple defenses in a round really start to hurt the troll, even with his 14 dice worth of soak. Just realized I didn't include wound penalties to the soak rolls, is that right? I don't remember off hand if wound penalties affect soak rolls or not (don't think they do).

Anyway, so troll can very safely take down a group of 6, and is highly in favor of taking down a group of 7, but 8 is about a 50/50 chance, and more than that is risky. Like I said, lower than I was expecting. I'll have to go back and double check it at some point to make sure I don't have something wonky going on.

I'm glad your results turned out similarly to mine. I'm not bad with probability mathmatics, though I'm in the enthusiastic amateur category rather than qualified mathematician. For working out who could fight what though, I turned to a friend (the guy who helped me with my site) who took a look at it, hummed a bit, and then said: "we're going to do this differently." And then we wrote a combat simulator together (I was in the management role. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ). We did take account of wound penalties on both sides (not for soak rolls) and we ran about 10,000 fights for each test to get our averages. The aim was to see how many the character could fight and reasonably expect to win, and for that it worked quite well. The whole diagram is not about what could happen, but what such a character might attempt. Not "could I jump to that next building" but "should I try?" The fights are the same principle.

[I Hate All Life]

Option System

1) How much one can lift is partially based on both raw mass and muscle weight (represented by Body). Thus, [Body + Strength] x 10 kgs is used as one's base lift, the amount a character can lift without making a check. So an average human (3s in Bod and Str) could lift 60 kgs.
2) Each hit on a Strength + Body test adds 10 kg to the amount she can lift. A character choose to convert dice on this test to automatic hits (up to half the pool), but she takes one point of stun damage on the following turn for each "auto-hit" -- she draws on her inner reserves but ends up pulling a muscle or tiring herself out. So the above character could convert two of her six dice dice to auto-hits, allowing her to lift 80 kgs (60 + 20) and giving her four dice to roll to add to that.

This gives us 60 kg for an average human base lift, with the potential to exceed this amount considerably (especially with Edge and converting dice to hits) but not that much on average. This is generous (especially when compared to what the system offers now) but not too unrealistic, and it allows for the occasional truly cinematic feat of strength without throwing the baseline out of whack. Anyone see anything fundamentally wrong with this?

[Draco18s]

This gives us 60 kg for an average human base lift, with the potential to exceed this amount considerably (especially with Edge and converting dice to hits) but not that much on average. This is generous (especially when compared to what the system offers now) but not too unrealistic, and it allows for the occasional truly cinematic feat of strength without throwing the baseline out of whack. Anyone see anything fundamentally wrong with this?

With an "I can always do this, but it kinda hurts" lift of 90 kg for 3S.

The only potential problem I see is that you're excessively high strength/body characters (ah la cyber troll) with 14 strength, 10 body can lift 240 kg base, 360 kg max auto-hits at the cost of 12 stun (taking 8 and a -2 to all future actions). The issue I see is when that stun damage takes effect: if its as the roll happens, they could be taking the -2 wound penalty to that roll, or it could happen after the fact (when they put the weight down again) whereby they can lift huge amounts and hold it indefinitely.

[TommyTwoToes]

I beleive I read way back inth e giant wall of thread that you had the Troll's reach give him one more die in his DP for melee. Doesn't it work out better for him to subract 1 from each ganger? It reduces each of their maximum hits by one and since their dicepools are so small anyway, it should have a proportionally larger impact.

If they need on average 3 hits to get past the Trolls defense, this is much harder to acheive on their 7-9DP if you reduce that DP to 6-8.

[I Hate All Life]

With an "I can always do this, but it kinda hurts" lift of 90 kg for 3S.

The only potential problem I see is that you're excessively high strength/body characters (ah la cyber troll) with 14 strength, 10 body can lift 240 kg base, 360 kg max auto-hits at the cost of 12 stun (taking 8 and a -2 to all future actions).

I see no big issue with this. If he's willing to sacrifice so much for that extra push, go for it.

The issue I see is when that stun damage takes effect: if its as the roll happens, they could be taking the -2 wound penalty to that roll, or it could happen after the fact (when they put the weight down again) whereby they can lift huge amounts and hold it indefinitely.

I said following turn; I should clarify. The lifter takes damage from lift auto-hits on the round after performing the feat of strength. So he operates at no penalty for that one round. If he has to continue taking damage to keep the thing aloft, then he can keep spending health on auto-hits. Hope his Doc Wagon contract is still good. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Draco18s]

I said following turn; I should clarify. The lifter takes damage from lift auto-hits on the round after performing the feat of strength. So he operates at no penalty for that one round. If he has to continue taking damage to keep the thing aloft, then he can keep spending health on auto-hits. Hope his Doc Wagon contract is still good. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Then I give it a little-silver-dragon sticker of approval.

[Karoline]

I beleive I read way back inth e giant wall of thread that you had the Troll's reach give him one more die in his DP for melee. Doesn't it work out better for him to subract 1 from each ganger? It reduces each of their maximum hits by one and since their dicepools are so small anyway, it should have a proportionally larger impact.

If they need on average 3 hits to get past the Trolls defense, this is much harder to acheive on their 7-9DP if you reduce that DP to 6-8.

Hmm, that's a good point. I'll switch it to dropping opponent's attack instead of increasing own attack and see what happens. Unfortunately the computer I have the program on is currently in three different rooms (Woo moving!) so I won't be able to run the program before Wednesday most likely.

[I Hate All Life]

Then I give it a little-silver-dragon sticker of approval.

Cool, thanks. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[tim]

RIIIIIIIISE

But seriously, anyone ever finish this up?